Questions of Death Row Justice For Poor People in Alabama

By SARA RIMER

Published: March 1, 2000

OPELIKA, Ala., Feb. 26—
The desk in Mike Williams's office is a map of his busy small-town practice. It is stacked with cases. The under-age Auburn University student charged with possession of alcohol. The collection of rent for a local real estate agent. The bitter divorce in which the wife, who is Mr. Williams's client, is charging the husband with adultery.

The case that does not fit is the one partly contained in the cardboard box on the floor: State of Alabama v. James Wyman Smith. Mr. Smith, 58, convicted of murdering a convenience-store clerk, had not had the money to hire a lawyer, and the court had appointed Mr. Williams to represent him at his two trials, even though Mr. Williams had scant experience in the practice of criminal law, not to mention the complex, ever-changing, high-stakes subspecialty of capital defense.

Mr. Williams had not even read the entire death penalty statute before his client's first trial in 1987. He had no money to hire an investigator. The state paid him so little that in a brief to the court he said he ended up making ''$4.98 per hour to prepare for the defense of a human's life.''

Sitting in his office, Mr. Williams declared, ''I will go to jail before I handle another capital case.''

Mr. Smith died on death row two weeks ago, of liver failure.

A majority of the public across the country supports capital punishment. But in states, there is an intensifying national debate over the issue of justice, focusing on the quality of the legal representation provided to poor people accused of capital crimes. At its sharpest, it is a question of whether some innocent people are on death row only because their state does not provide the resources for an adequate or competent public defender system.

Last month, the pro-death-penalty Republican governor of Illinois, George Ryan, called for a moratorium on the death penalty after concluding that 13 innocent people had almost been executed, in some cases because of dismal defenses mounted by incompetent, poorly paid lawyers.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, recently introduced legislation that set national standards to ensure that competent lawyers are appointed for capital defendants. The Justice Department has initiated its own review to determine whether the federal death penalty system unfairly discriminates against racial minorities.

Some states, including New York, New Jersey and Colorado, have multimillion-dollar capital defender offices that provide teams of lawyers and investigators for people in death penalty trials.

At the other end of the spectrum is Alabama, which, with a death row growing at the fastest rate in the country, has no statewide public defender system. Court-appointed capital defense lawyers here are paid so little that many lawyers refuse the work.

In cities like Montgomery and Birmingham, where the pool of lawyers is greater, lawyers can remove themselves from the list of those willing to be appointed to capital cases. But in smaller jurisdictions, like Opelika, a judge can compel a lawyer to take a case, or find the lawyer in contempt for refusing.

So the job often falls to young, inexperienced lawyers, or older ones who earn a living through court appointments, leaving many of those charged with capital offenses with inadequate representation at trial, and some without representation in the appeals process.

''Basically these folks are sent into battle underequipped, undertrained and undercompensated,'' said Kevin Doyle, the New York capital defender, who spent five years working on capital cases in Alabama with the federally financed capital defense resource center, which Congress has since eliminated.

Two people on Alabama's death row have been found innocent since executions were reinstated in the late 1970's. Nationwide, there were 85 such cases.

''Alabama is our top priority,'' said Elisabeth Semel, who as head of the American Bar Association's death penalty representation project in Washington recruits law firms across the country to handle cases pro bono. ''The need for competent lawyers there is desperate.''

Numerous studies by legal experts of Alabama's capital defense system have documented severe shortcomings, including lawyers who fail to do the most fundamental tasks, like investigating the crime and their clients' backgrounds and presenting closing arguments.

The Alabama attorney general, Bill Pryor, a Republican, said he had no concerns about the quality of court-appointed defense counsel for people in death penalty cases at any stage in the process, from arrest to death row. ''My judgment is that at both the trial and appellate level we face very experienced and competent opponents,'' he said.

''We have not had the problems they have in Illinois,'' he added. ''No one can design a perfect system of justice. I would like to have more resources for the young lawyers who come to work for me.''

Mr. Pryor said he is concerned that the appeals process takes too long, a criticism made by many prosecutors of their state justice systems. For example, he said, execution is set for Friday for Freddie Lee Wright, who has spent 22 years on death row while lawyers appealed his case.

The 1963 United States Supreme Court decision Gideon v. Wainwright guaranteed all defendants the right to counsel.